Florida International (Never. It started football in 2002 and has played in Div. I-A since 2005).

Note: Louisiana-Monroe and Western Kentucky have been in Div. I-A since 1994 and 2009, respectively.

Longest bowl droughts in NCAA history

Louisiana-Monroe, 62 years, 1948-present

Cincinnati, 56, 1951-1997

New Mexico State, 49, 1961-present

Rice, 45, 1961-2006

Notre Dame*, 45, 1924-1969

Colorado State, 42, 1948-1990

Louisiana-Lafayette, 39, 1971-present

Kent State,37, 1973-present

New Mexico, 36, 1961-1997

Oregon State, 34, 1965-1999

Memphis, 32, 1971-2003

Navy, 31, 1923-1954

Temple, 30 , 1979-2009

Utah, 28, 1964-1993

Akron, 28, 1976-2005

Southern Methodist, 25, 1984-2009

Vanderbilt, 25, 1983-2007

Note: *Notre Dame did not allow its football team to participate in bowl games despite 36 winning seasons during that span.

Akron was Division II for its first bowl appearance in 1976.

Source: NCAA records, Louisiana-Lafayette

Near the foot of the Organ Mountains in southern New Mexico, an embarrassing topic of conversation usually comes up at least twice a year.

It has to do with the postseason bowl drought of the New Mexico State football team.

“It’s brought up at the start and end of every season for sure,” said Sam Wasson, editor of the NMSU fan site bleedCrimson.net.

In between, the same sort of heartache has developed for 50 straight years. The Aggies haven’t been to a bowl game since 1960, but here they are again: another season, another chance, starting with their season opener Saturday in Las Cruces, N.M.

They face San Diego State in a game that otherwise might be billed as “The Bowl-Drought Bowl.” Out of 120 major college football programs, only 11 have been playing more than 11 years without a bowl berth. Two of them -- NMSU and SDSU -- meet Saturday, with the winner moving one step closer to a prize that’s easier to obtain than ever before. All they need to do is finish with a 6-6 record and receive one of 70 invitations to play in an all-time record 35 bowl games this season.

That’s better odds than a coin flip. Seventy out of 120 teams (58 percent) will get there. It’s a bar set so low that SDSU players won’t talk about it as a goal. Neither will SDSU head coach Brady Hoke.

“Our goal as a team is to get the Mountain West Championship,” SDSU senior safety Darryn Lewis said. “Doing that is going to require us to go to a bowl game. Those expectations are set, which I don’t think they have been set like that previously. It’s always been to try our best. But now with coach Hoke here, it’s always been about championships. Being OK is not acceptable.”

Being OK still might be acceptable for many of these 11 bowl-starved teams, all hammered by losing seasons, bad coaches and some crummy luck.